Your child's report card comes home with the little box checked indicating his or her promotion to the next grade is "at risk."

So what's the chance he or she will be held back a year?

Very slim.

Of the 1,132,582 children enrolled in Ontario elementary schools in 2007-2008, only 2,647 students were in the same grade as they had been the previous year, according to statistics obtained from the Ministry of Education by The Niagara Falls Review.

That's roughly one in 428.

The practice of "social promotion" has become so common, in fact, that some

school boards, including Niagara Catholic District School Board, don't keep track of numbers.

And then there are those, including the District School Board of Niagara, whose administrators want to avoid talking about the issue altogether.

"We would choose not to participate in an article about students failing," Brett Sweeney, a spokesman for DSBN, wrote in an e-mail response to The Review's request for an interview about elementary grade retention figures and practices.

"The District School Board of Niagara is committed to student success and we focus on ensuring that all students have the tools, confidence and support they need to succeed in school. We would be pleased to outline those supports and strategies if that interests you."

John Crocco, Niagara Catholic's director of education, said the board's elementary retention rate is "low," but couldn't immediately provide figures because the board office doesn't routinely collect that data.

"I'd have to probably do some research to find out the numbers and I might be able to get back to you," Crocco said.

When asked if a couple of days would be a sufficient amount of time to find the requested figure, Crocco said: "You know what? It would take some time because I'd almost have to go back and say to folks, you know, how many were retained. That would take time because I'd have to survey all of the schools."

Frank Fera, one of two Catholic board trustees representing Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the- Lake, said he's fairly certain the number of elementary students that fail a grade in any given year is zero or pretty close to it.

"I don't know of any principals at this time who are retaining students," said Fera, who served 34 years as an elementary school principal and teacher in Niagara and 10 years as a trustee. "It's a philosophy we don't believe in at this time.

"Even when I was an educator, we never retained students at that time."

Like Crocco, Fera supports the concept of social promotion -- passing underachievers along to the next higher grade with their peers while at the same time providing remedial supports to the students.

Both cite a large body of research over the past 40 years that concludes failing students, particularly those at the elementary level, does more harm than good.

Fera said he believes the majority of parents of elementary children know their children will in all likelihood be promoted, even in cases where a student's grades show achievement below provincial standards in multiple areas.

Ontario's elementary school report cards include a section that indicates the student's current promotion status. Students are judged to fall into one of three categories: "progressing well toward promotion," "progressing with some difficulty toward promotion" or "promotion at risk."

"If you want my personal opinion on that, it's a sort of cover-your-ass sort of thing," said Fera. "They put it on there in the (event) a child is retained and they then have to justify it, so they say, 'Well, here, we put it up at the top that the child was at risk.

"But in most cases today, there's communication with parents all of the time, so the parents are aware the child is not functioning where he should be or she should be. And at the same time, there are programs in place to help every child."

Ed Nieuwesteeg, the other Niagara Catholic trustee representing Niagara Falls, said statistics on the number of elementary students retained isn't information the board sees or is required to track.

"If it was something the ministry required us to submit as part of an annual education plan we would, but we don't, at least to my knowledge, keep that number because it's miniscule," said Nieuwesteeg.

"It's not something we even discuss as a board.

"I would hazard a guess in our board if we had more than five or six (students retained) a year, I'd be surprised."

Any students who are retained, said Nieuwesteeg, were likely held back because of extenuating circumstances, such as being absent for a prolonged period of time due to illness. "It would probably be something that's not directly related to their academic performance.... They're sort of an anomaly within our system."

Kevin Maves and Barb Ness, the two public school trustees representing Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake, did not respond to The Review's request for an interview.

In his four years as trustee, said Dame, the issue of retention at the elementary level hasn't come up very often.

"I think because the ministry doesn't ask us to report on that kind of stuff, it doesn't get reported, it doesn't get accumulated in facts and numbers," said Dame. "You might get a trustee who has an interest in it and asks a question to one of the superintendents, but to my knowledge I don't recall any conversation in recent times when it has come to the board."

jrobbins@nfreview.com

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By the numbers

Number of Ontario elementary school students grades 1-8 in 2007-2008, who were in the same grade as the previous academic year. Figures specific to Niagara's English public and English Catholic boards were not available.